


No Empty Towns

by empires, salvadore



Category: DCU (Comics), Gotham City Garage (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Fixing GCG so it makes sense or bust, GCG Batman is Lawful Evil, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Kidnapping, M/M, Mad Max Aesthetic, Mad Science, Minor Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:29:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21726049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empires/pseuds/empires, https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvadore/pseuds/salvadore
Summary: Dick’s smile had been so easy, and so confident when he pressed soft words against Jason’s lips. “Trust me,” he said. “We’ll get it done. Three days tops.”
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Comments: 73
Kudos: 183





	1. Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> Empires: Nearly three years ago, I approached K with the idea of adding a Gotham City Garage chapter for our universe hopping fic, [A New Taste of Love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12641253) when close to the finish (i.e. post-beta and less than week out from posting I am a terrible partner, y'all. The patience of people is astounding). Rather than strangling me with the very chords of the internet upon which we met, K kindly suggested we table that idea. Here we are with that story. Please enjoy!
> 
> Salvadore: Empires and I have been incredibly lucky to write together three times now, and I am so grateful to her for writing this with me. Please enjoy the fruits of our labors ♥
> 
> Most (90%) of chapters are completed and being edited to go up. The tags will change as chapters go up (Meaning: when I remember what the tags are. Feel free to comment if I missed one), but the big ones are there. So be aware of those. We hope you enjoy this attempt to write JayDick that turned into "god, we've got to fix GCG entirely don't we?" fic that we wrote.

Dick groans, unwilling to wake up this particular morning. He presses his face to the pillow, scrunching his eyes even as shivers run down his spine. There’s a warm chuckle pressed to his skin, and Dick knows it isn’t just the overheard fan spinning as high as it will go that’s brought up goosebumps, and roused him to waking. He shivers again. No, it’s a familiar and teasing touch. 

Dick’s fingers curl in the sheet as he feels Jason’s lips part, and there's the momentary touch of teeth to the curve of his shoulder blade. 

Fingers curl around Dick’s hips, and they’re a comforting weight as Jason’s kisses trail south. Arousal makes Dick stretch his legs, and he can feel how the top sheet has ended up caught and twisted around his knees while he slept. It seems like too much effort to deal with it. He wants to stay here with the heat of Jason’s hands on him until he’s soothed back to sleep. 

“It can’t be dawn already,” Dick protests. What he wants to ask for is five more minutes. 

“ ‘fraid so, Wonder Boy,” Jason says. It’s soft, lacking the gruff tone Jason puts on when they’re anywhere but the safety of their bedroom. 

By the amount of light in the room, Dick knows the sun is already rising. He was supposed to be on his bike by now. He hadn’t meant to stay until Jason awoke, but he’d slept heavily in Jason’s arms. It’s becoming a pattern. Time in No Man’s Land with the Hoods, with Jason specifically, was sanding his rough edges. Dick hasn’t overslept in years. Not since before he’d quit serving the Gardens and been declared excommunicated. Back then it had been safe to act at his leisure.

That’s not the case in No Man’s Land. In their bedroom, Dick and Jason keep light curtains on the window so they will rise with the sun. “Curtains” is a generous name for them; they are embroidery and lace, and perhaps were meant for vanity more than purpose. Jason had found them during a raid, Dick doesn’t know where or how, but he had been so gentle in presenting them, Dick had put them up without asking. 

Dick usually sleeps poorly and wakes before the sun. Today he can tell from the cool temperature of the room that it’s still early yet. Jason got a head start on him.

Outside the window is a long expanse of dirt and desert, and the heat rolls in on the back of the bright, red sun.

Dick turns his head so he can catch a glimpse of Jason. It’s a bit of a stretch to see over his shoulder. He can only catch a glimpse of the broadness of Jason’s shoulders, and strong arms. Dick gently touches Jason’s fingers. They have a farmer’s tan in the shapes of the fingerless gloves the Red Hood gang wear as a uniform. Lacing them together, Jason squeezes his affectionately in turn. It’s a little thing, but it makes heat coil in Dick’s stomach, and makes his toes curl.

Suddenly Dick aches to see Jason’s eyes and the shape of his plush lower lip. He wants to reassure himself by sight. 

Jason adjusts easily when Dick rolls over. His hands trail across Dick’s skin until he’s settled onto his back, Jason braced above him. They’re both nude, skin pressed together, sliding into place, Jason’s inner thigh parting his own. Jason, bedhead and all, smiles. His freckles standout in the early light. It softens him, and smooths the careworn lines. The soft light soothes the anger Jason wears too often like armor. Here, Jason looks young. 

“Morning, darling,” Jason says. Dick will never get tired of it. He tugs Jason in for a kiss. 

Their lips come together slow, like the morning; slow like the breath Dick takes when Jason’s thumbs make circles on his body before sliding down the soft, sensitive skin of his inner thighs, spreading them wide so he can settle his weight there. Dick’s careful with Jason on mornings like this. They’re so rare that Dick is afraid of changing their tone. 

So he’s careful in the way he uses nails, dragging them through Jason’s hair and combing out the curls at the nape of Jason’s neck. Tugging them into a mess as he twists his fingers in them when Jason bites Dick’s lower lip. It feels so good, he tugs again in a silent demand for more. Jason’s hair ends up messier and worse than it is just from bedhead. Dick can’t help but laugh when they stop kissing and pull away. 

Jason says, “Oh you think that’s funny, pretty boy?” And kisses along Dick’s jaw and below his ear as Dick keeps laughing. And then Dick groans, helplessly arching against Jason’s body, warmed through. Jason is too good with his tongue.

Slowly, Dick’s legs hook over Jason’s hips, feet locked to keep them in place. He’s not letting this boy go. Not now. Not when Dick begins to match the easy roll of Jason’s hips and pleasure simmers just beneath his skin. His fingers tighten in Jason’s hair, his other hand twists into the sheets groaning because Jason’s pulled away to dot kisses along his chin, his jaw. The kisses slow becoming deliberate, an exchange affection because neither of them are good at simply accepting it. But it feels like something Dick can understand when their alone together. A kiss to his throat is met by a gentle nip of teeth to Jason's ear. Dick to the crown of Jason’s head. Jason to Dick’s collar bone, making a line across. Leaving Dick shivering from over-stimulation and yearning when Jason lingers in a kiss to his throat on the way across. He’s unmindful of the time. 

It’s long after dawn by the time they’re dressed. Dick gets more than his five minutes. 

Fresh from a shower, Dick perches on the kitchen counter to watch Jason scramble eggs for him. It had been too tempting to share a shower, so Jason had gone without. He’d caught a glimpse of Jason shrugging on his jeans, and now they’re sitting low on Jason’s hips. Dick stares at him obviously, wanting to be caught. 

“We were out of bread,” Jason says softly. “Sorry,” he starts to add except he turns and catches Dick staring at his ass. Shirtless, Jason can’t hide the way it makes him blush, under his freckles, all the way down his chest. 

He waves his spatula at Dick menacingly, but Dick has seen Jason when he’s serious. The first time they’d met, Jason had been deadly serious. He’d been well within his rights to be vicious, and he’d looked the part. Dick _had appropriated his motorcycle._

There is none of that on Jason’s face now. If Dick wanted to, he could reach out and brush his thumb over the pout of Jason’s lower lip. Jason would be open to his touch.

So he does. Dick reaches out and snags the wrist holding the spatula, and Jason goes easy when Dick tugs him close. He hooks his legs behind Jason’s holding him there as if it’s not exactly where Jason wants to be. Dick knows he’s going to be late, but Jason’s lips seek out the hickey he made this morning and leaving seems like the absolute last thing he should do. With each passing minute, he knows his resolve is weakening, and he knows he’s garnering Selina’s wrath. But he tells himself that they have time, ignoring the butterflies in his stomach.

There’s no danger he can’t handle on the way to the rendezvous. It’s the mission after where the danger lies. 

“Sorry about this,” Jason says, pressing his thumb to the hickey. It’s wet with his spit, and in contradiction to his words, Jason is smirking shamelessly. 

“I’ll wear it as a badge of honor,” Dick says. He winks, and then draws Jason in for a kiss. 

They only part long enough for Jason to make sure the eggs don’t burn, and to start the ancient coffeemaker. They exchange kisses and information about the group. The old, salvaged drip-coffee maker sputters and spews as it tries to make a cup that will taste like sludge. 

Jason leans back in Dick’s embrace, his back to Dick’s front, and runs his hand over Dick’s knee. He’s telling Dick the latest reports from scouts. It’s been quiet on the Red Hood’s borders for over a year now. Jason doesn’t know how to trust it. 

They are helplessly unable to keep their hands off each other. Not when the food is ready, or after the first bitter sip of coffee. Their moment of solitude is running out, and they’ve stretched it and the tasks ahead of them as far as they can go. 

It’s time Dick left. 

He steals Jason’s jacket on the way out the door. Not his command jacket, but the one he wears every day. It’s worn-soft leather, and to anyone’s eyes the red patch on the sleeve of a motorcycle helmet easily declares the wearer’s loyalties. Dick presses his face to the collar to breath in Jason’s scent. It’s stone and sweat, and the sweet sticky chemical tang that Jason uses to coat his bikes. Beneath that, the smell of leather. Faintest of all, the cologne Dick recovered on a mission. Jason wears it sparingly, but sometimes Dick can catch it here or on their pillows. 

Only the high wall guards are awake to mark their walk to the vehicle bay. The base is near empty this time of day. The faded asphalt crunches beneath their footsteps.

Jason follows him out to his bike, and his body language changes under the rising sun. He stands straight and his eyes are sharp over the barest flicker of movement about the encampment. He wheels Dick’s bike down personally, a heavy black cruiser that somehow sweeps across the terrain faster than thought. He picked a good one all those months ago. 

A little smirk curls the corner of Dicks’ mouth as his gaze sweep down Jason’s broad back. Picked two good ones.

Dick returns his attention to the saddlebags. Frowning, he counts through the rations again. Sometime between yesterday morning and today an additional pull of jerky and two charge rounds for his weapons had been added to the pack. 

Jason steps over the front wheel of Dick’s bike, holding onto the metal of the handlebars while Dick settles with his hands on the grips. They exchange the mission details—itinerary, supplies, how many days in and out. Jason looks pensive. 

There’s the leader Dick knows. 

“So, you’ve got everything?” Jason asks. 

“Yep.” Dick raps the rear fender with his knuckle. “She had a leftward lean when I brought her in. No problems at all during yesterday’s test drive. I think I’m ready to go.”

“Yeah, techs replaced the dampers, and I checked their work. But I can do it again.” 

Knowing Jason, he means that he pulled on his oil-stained coveralls, slapped on a face mask, and welded the newly-fitted steering dampers himself. And he’d do it again if Dick thought it was necessary. He bites back a fond smile.

“I trust you,” Dick says. He runs his fingers over Jason’s in a soothing motion. It isn’t as reassuring with his gloves on. It would be better if Jason could feel his skin.

“You sure?”

“I’ll be fine,” Dick says. 

Jason’s nostrils flare, he’s taking breaths the way he does when faced with a tough choice and the need for a calm response outweighs his instincts. 

“Don’t go,” Jason says, and Dick is surprised. “Not alone. Give me twenty minutes to gear up and I’ll come with you.” 

“What’s brought this on?” 

Dick doesn’t say ‘I’ve done this a hundred times,’ because he hasn’t. Not that Jason knows. He thinks that Dick is going on something routine. Dick wonders if Jason can tell he’s keeping secrets. He wishes it wasn’t something he did so often. 

Seriousness has slipped into Jason’s eyes, and Dick wishes they could go back. If only they could have stayed in the safety of their rooms together. “Maybe the Garden’s been quiet lately, but running solo these days? It’s still risky. You need someone to watch your back.”

“Selina’s my partner. We’ll make it back okay,” Dick says, a mistake judging by the way Jason’s jaw tightens. He lets a wry grin spread across his lips and tugs Jason’s hand gently. "Besides, we can't both leave again. Last time we did they set Eddie on fire.”

Jason just says, “Let me come with you.”

“I’ll be back in three days,” Dick insists. He tries to exude calm, and make that furrow disappear from Jason’s brow.

Jason doesn’t surrender, but he doesn’t push Dick away either. Dick isn't the only one who has warmed during their months together. And despite Jason's obvious trepidation, he reaches out to Dick. Then there’s the warmth of Jason’s fingers under his chin, tilting Dick’s face up for a kiss across the handlebars. 

Dick knows he can’t stay, but he hates that Jason kissing him feels like a goodbye. 

It should be easy to tell Jason he loves him, because the moment is right and those words are true. He wants to tell Jason he loves him and everything will be alright, but they get tangled in his head and his throat constricts tightly. Instead, Jason reluctantly steps out of the way, and Dick forces a smile as he kicks the stand up. 

Dick zips the jacket up, but not so far that the hickey is hidden beneath it. With a playful smile, he runs his gloved fingers over it. Again, he says, “Three days, babe.”

Then he’s off. The rev of the motor in his ears. In the mirror, Jason grows smaller. His larger than life passion and his will shrink into a shadow and then the scatter of dust in the wind. He’ll tell Jason when he gets back. He’ll get those words out when he gets back. 

It’s a promise.


	2. The Red Hoods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason realizes how quiet it is without Dick, and background on the Red Hoods is established.

Jason realizes how silent the mornings are the first day without Dick, when his chatter isn’t there to fill the space.

He makes his coffee, opens the windows, watches the world come to life one lingering ray of sunlight after another without a single word being said. The quiet is peaceful but also empty. It’s not only Dick’s voice that’s missing, but the satisfied sounds Dick makes when worming into the cool side of the pillow, and the low laughter filling the air when Jason stubs his toe on the way to the bathroom. Dick’s soothing murmurs pressed into his temple when they hold each other through a nightmare.

Everything is a reminder that Dick isn’t there. From the chipped mug on the drain that he always uses to their narrow bed that should be too small but suits them fine.

The day grows marginally better a few hours later when the mess hall opens and the scent of hot food coaxes people out of their beds. Red Hoods mingle in line before fanning out into groups at the various tables. There’s no real attention paid to rank or seniority—nothing regimented other than mess hall hours and upkeep of the vehicles. All that matters is how well you ride and where you place your loyalty, which is, in Jason’s opinion, the thing that saved them all.

Since moving out to No Man’s Land, the Hoods have been lucky to stay removed from the territorial wars. None of the other factions had wanted such untillable land even if it meant being hidden from the Luthor and Wayne dome cities—the Gardens they call them. Out here, they’re free to be who they want. To be with who they want.

Today, Jason is feeling sentimental. He takes the table in the corner. From the window he can see the rough, sun baked desert that stretches for miles away from ridgelines that mark Red Hood territory. But it’s not the view that draws him to the corner. The bench at this table has Dick’s initials idly carved into it. Jason brushes his fingers over them when he sits down.

First meal of the day is hash, a hodgepodge of rations and traded fresh foods thrown together to make something edible. The first bite tastes bland, surprisingly. And if he has a thought to why the simple, everyday food spreads like ash on his tongue, Jason doesn’t pursue it.

Jason doesn’t run the crew with the fear that Black Mask did before the Red Hoods won their freedom and split off on their own under Jason. But there is a distance in the mornings, especially a morning where the rumors of Dick leaving have made it through the whole crew. Jason expected to eat alone, but the Dick Grayson effect lingers in his absence turning expectations on their head.

Halfway through the bowl, Kyle Rayner and Harper Row sit across from him with an air of quiet deference. Well, Kyle looks quiet. Harper’s a little bedraggled with the faintest of circles beneath her eyes.

Kyle has been with the Hoods since Jason took over the crew. Poached from the Lanterns, and Jason always crows a little on the inside at that. Theirs was a hard won mutual respect, but Jason trusts Kyle’s intentions and the way he looks at the world. Kyle is his left hand out here, and Jason trusts his guidance on any actions Jason makes.

Harper though, she’s one of Dick’s stray birds dragged in rough from the desert, dehydrated and determined to ride back out to tear the domes and every Metallo apart with her bare hands. That’s the kind of tenacity Jason could respect. And Dick had vouched for her. She was training with Kyle as the leader for the younger members of the crew.

“Do you have to bring me trouble this early in the morning, Rayner?” Jason almost succeeds in keeping the frustration out of his voice. Almost. But everyone knows Dick was heading out at dawn. Historically, not the best time to catch Jason for a favor.

Kyle’s grin is quick, disarming if you didn’t know him. “Wouldn’t call it trouble.”

Jason turns his attention to Harper. “What would you call it?”

“A loss of two hours of sleep.” Harper yawns, heavily, then blinks, an apology in her tired eyes. “Sorry boss. It’s early.”

Jason grunts, chewing the next bite, and Kyle translates. “That means he’s waiting for us to get to the point.”

“Right. Hiro managed to get another sensor running and we want to send it with the trading party leaving this morning.” Harper explains, and the mention of Hiro, their resident engineer also known as the Toymaster, draws Jason’s complete attention. “The reliability of our tracking and transmitting will increase using this array.” She glances at Kyle, whose nod relaxes her further. “Sending it with the outriders is perfect for range testing.”

Since Jason took over, scavenging tech and putting it into use has been the Red Hood’s third most pressing issue. It is another layer of security, increasing their ability to track communications and activities between the domes, one Jason puts considerable resources into. The chances of finding tech on the Freescape have dwindled over the past months when factoring the spread of blasted land, the decrease in transport units from the Gardens, and the influx of groups on the hard roads. Finding tech in No Man’s Land is slim to none. They’re making do though. Managing to construct a track and transmission device from next to nothing is pretty impressive. He just wished they had finished it before Dick had left.

Jason’s forehead creases in thought. As far as he knows, Dick is the only person who was leaving the base today, and those trips are always unofficial.

“We’ve got a scouting team six days out in the east and an eight man raid two days out on their return.” Jason’s pauses and Kyle affirms his rundown with a nod. “Who’s going out today?”

“Wildcat is taking a squad on a trading run,” Kyle explains. “We got word last night that a caravan is making a loop near round the old Eries.”

Caravans are a rare circus of people on the Freescape who travel between enclaves like GCG and Painted Sands, places that managed to eke out a way of life outside the remaining domes and gardens.

“Next time lead with that,” Jason says. “Who sorted the trade goods?”

“Spoiler and Nightwing were on duty last week. It should be ready to go,” says Kyle, and Jason agrees. Those two are good at knowing what people want and preparing it for trade.

“Send the array, but I want a techie to travel with them, one that knows what they should be doing in case something goes wrong,” Jason says. “And I want to check their bikes before they leave. Let me finish this up, and I’ll be ready.”

Kyle and Harper ease from their seats and head for the exit.

Sighing, Jason stares at his meal. The last few bites of hash go down quickly, and Jason is on his feet again moving towards the yard.

Five riders wait under the eves of the giant hanger the Red Hoods call home. They’re talking amongst themselves, rowdy and ready to ride. Ted Grant, also known as Wildcat, is leading the trade run. He’s one of the first Red Hoods in Jason’s memories, silver-haired with a quick wit and quicker hands. Every young gun and fighter spends time training with the Wildcat and most come out better for it. Jefferson, Tatsu, Rex, and Emily round out the team. They all look impossibly young next to Ted, especially when his smile lines fold over his wrinkles like that.

Ted steps back to look up at Jason, when they met Jason hadn’t come up to more than his shoulder. Even after years, the change amuses them both. “Boss man seeing us off? It’s an honor.”

“More like undoing your last minute tune-ups. You want to ride easy? Then leave it to me.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. The kid makes three good decisions and suddenly starts throwing his weight around.”

“Three? Look at all the respect I’m building. And it only took what? Six years?” Jason grins. “Besides, throwing my weight around has saved your ass a few times.”

Ted is grinning too. “You’re never gonna let me live that down - ” 

“I’m sure you could have driven back through sheer force of will,” Jason says. “But if I remember right, Rayner said the wheel came clean off when you- ”

“Ahem. I’m teaching here,” Ted says, twinkle in his eye even as he puffs up his chest and plants his hands on his hips. Jason lets his gaze fall to the others, who are watching the exchange with curious eyes. They’re new enough that they never saw him, brash and reckless. And young.

“Don’t let me stop you, old man.” Jason slides behind them and falls into an immediate crouch besides their bikes to give the trouble spots another look while the conversation resumes behind him.

“As I was saying,” Ted begins, “You let Emily and Jeff do all the talking.”

“What about me?” Rex says. “I went all the way out to Little KeyStone with Grayson. I know exactly what to say.”

“Yeah, sure you do, kid,” Ted says, soothingly. “But you’re missing the most important part.”

Rex puffs up. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes. You have yet to learn when not to say something,” Tatsu says, a small grin at the corner of her mouth. Ted’s shoulders begin to shake and then the heavy gravel of his laughter crackles free.

Jason and Ted discovered the four outsiders scavenging the remains of a ravaged caravan and brought them into the fold. For the longest time, they remained a unit unto themselves. They’ve settled now, not enough to share their secrets, but enough to let some of the past go. Put down the past and put yourself out there to build for the future. It’s all he’s every really asked of everyone seeking to join them. Well, Jason smiles grimly. Almost everyone.

The next three bikes make it through Jason’s skeptical pass, each purring hungrily upon starting. The forth gives him pause. The fluid lines are solid, but the odometer is slow to spin up. He pulls his lips back and whistles sharply as he swings off the seat. Two heads pop out of the bay doors, and Jason calls to them.

“Trade this one out with 44, then put it in my queue.” He turns back to the assembled group. “Where’s your techie?”

A sharp voice pipes up from behind them. “Here!”

Jason turns to find a slim young man with soft, dark hair and sharp eyes striding in besides Kyle. Of course it’s Tim. He showed up on the Red Hood’s door step, a thin shadow at dusk with a determined set in his jaw. He’s another one of Dick’s, despite him never acknowledging it, but it’s evident in his painful intelligence and pinpoint knowledge about movements inside the Garden. Jason still hasn’t warmed up to the kid, but Tim has put as much work in as Hiro building their salvaged tech into working assets—almost as much as Jason has in their growing fleet of vehicles in the hanger.

“You picked this one?”

“The best for the job,” Tim says.

Grinning, Kyle rests a hand on Tim’s narrow shoulder. “He was up.”

“I was up,” Tim concedes. “And I know what I’m doing.”

“Debatable,” Jason says. “You’ll be on 121.” He’d taken the bike out himself yesterday and it’s ready to ride. In more than a few arguments, Dick likes to point out Jason has “control issues,” even after Jason had tried to explain to him what it means to send his riders out where danger lurks and nothing is certain. He can’t be out there with them, but he can at least give them something reliable. The hum of your wheels on the ground, the roar of the motor, sometimes it’s the only promise you have, the only way to make it back.

The garage grunts wheel the bikes out, 44 and a cherry red number that is 121, at least that’s what was written on the can Jason had found.

The group rides out shortly after his last check. Jason’s already in the hanger, sliding into his coveralls ready to bring this day to a close.

* * *

“Your boyfriend’s gone for six hours and this is what you resort to? Welding in the dark?”

The voice, thick with amusement, stirs Jason from his work. He depresses the handle of the arc-solder. The single flame sputters out. He drops the welding tool into its holder and sits back from the workbench. The small action brings a wealth of complaints from across his body. His shoulders ache from leaning forward for so long and his back stiff.

Sighing, Jason stretches long arms upwards before turning to find Kyle propped against the metal struts of the doorway.

“Don’t you get tired of following me all day?” Jason grunts.

Kyle’s lips twitch. “No. Your bitching is a balm for the soul. What are you doing?”

“Had an idea. Came down here to work on it,” he replies in a voice gruff from lack of water and no food in his belly. Jason scrubs at his face, then pulls off the protective goggles and scrubs again.

“And never left,” Kyle says wryly.

“Like you’re one to talk,” Jason mutters. “So what is it this time? Oh, don’t give me that look,” he adds when Kyle tries to pull an innocent look from his ass and wear bright and shiny it like a Garden badge, “You have a knack for coming to me when things are about to get complicated.”

After taking control of the gang, Jason soon learned that being accessible wasn’t always the best way to work through problems. The morning meeting was only one of several examples of how Kyle managed daily information and issues in the base, delegating where he could and bearing the bad news when it came.

“Not this time. No one’s looking for you, but I noticed you kinda absented yourself from the hanger.”

“Absented myself?” Jason repeats with a laugh. “I like that.”

“You gonna show me what took you off?”

“Nosey,” says Jason. Without the steady light of the arc-solder, the space does seem pretty cave like. Appropriate. He reaches for the switch behind the work table and curses when it flickers twice before slow, shuddering light begins to dawn. “There you go. Remind me to take a look at the generators out here.”

“You know we have guys who can do that right? It’s on the rotation.”

“I know,” Jason says. “Know they can knock it out too.” But it’s different, this project of his that’s somehow more personal than the work he does in the hangar surrounded by the first tools he ever used to rebuild machines that opened the world.

Bathed in flickering white light, the cavern looks less mysterious. It’s stone walls were carved smooth and square long ago by tool’s Jason’s never before seen. He’d stumbled across this underground hold months after the Hoods expanded the base. Built twenty feet below the surface with a few storage containers filled with books and tools, Jason thought the space was a shelter of some kind. One that never had the opportunity to be used.

Dropping to a crouch, Kyle leans over the rounded metal coils Jason managed to complete. “What is it.”

“Start of a project I’ve been kicking around for a few weeks. Got the idea from one of those books scavenged from that wreckage we found.”

“Found. Right,” Kyle drawls. “What’s it going to do?”

“Clean soil if I do it right.” He doesn’t bother fighting back the smug grin at Kyle’s startled glance.

“You’re serious? What? How?”

“Slow down. I’ll be able to tell you more if I get it to work. But just think about it. We’ll be able to grow our own greens. Be a little more self-sufficient. We won’t have to roam so far for trade. Hell, we’ll be bringing more of our own goods to the table.”

Kyle turns to him, brow furrowed in a way that means calculations under the big picture Jason just drew. “What are you going to need to make this happen?”

“Resources,” Jason says simply. “Same as anything else.”

He lifts the delicate component into the light. Small. The foundation of his newest dream looks so small in his rough hands. They’re quite a sight. Rough palms, bruised knuckles and crooked third and fourth fingers on his left hand that never healed right. He’d never thought his hands were good for anything more than starting fights and ending them. Maybe coaxing an engine to turn over. Not until he met Dick.

He’d been building with these hands, and only seeing it as surviving. Fix a bike, recycle Garden tech, and maybe it’d keep the younger kids alive. Now that there’s something solid for them out here, Jason wants to create. He wants to build and see this place last. Maybe if he can do that then their little space on the Freescape will stop feeling so hard won to him, and more like this strange home they share. Maybe, Dick would even…

Jason cuts that thought of in its tracks. He rises to his feet. “Come on. We can’t leave things unsupervised. And we’ve got work to do.”


	3. Promise of Water

With a tap of the foot and a twist of her wrist, Kara shoots out of the winding canyon shadows. Her destination is the escarpment at the end of the salt flats where the Red Hood’s base sits. It’s a dangerous trip when compared to the relative safety of the Freescape where the Gotham City Garage lays claim, but Kara knows it well enough now to ride it. Running with Nightwing, even as limited as that disastrous mission with the Cat, had given Kara a reputation. If GCG wanted to meet with the Red Hoods on peace terms - they sent Kara.

She tightens her grip on the handles, and feels the air flowing down the canyon walls hit her with a wall of heat. It does nothing to shake her. When the sky is this blue and the sun this bright, she knows anything is possible. The energy flows through her, scintillating, heady, alive, and she’ll need that optimism to succeed in her most daring mission for the GCG yet.

The gates open before Kara reaches the hilltop entrance. Although she’s only visited a handful of times, she recognizes a few faces patrolling the outer walls, and several seem to recognize her as well. They are welcoming in the loud, rash way she’s come to know as _Red Hood._

Her powder blue cruiser comes to a stop under a shaded bearth. Kara slides off with a relieved groan, body curving in a back-popping stretch.

Immediately, she’s pulled aside by a sharp-eyed woman with sky-colored hair—Harper. She recalls the name and the smokey voice in the shadows of the garage before her soft lips part.

“Is there a problem, Harper?” Kara asks, smiling as a hand curls around her wrist, tugging it down from where Kara is trying to remove her helmet.

“Not for me, but you should know that the little boss has been out on the Freescape for a couple days. You might want to take your business back to GCG until he gets back,” says Harper, and it’s a strange warning, one that has Kara tilt her head, gaze considering.

“I don’t need Kyle nearby to talk to your big boss.”

Harper grins. “I’m not talking about him.”

“Nightwing’s gone? Todd must be bored out of his mind. All the more reason for me to see him.” Kara kicks off the ground, ignoring the shouts as she floats through the base.

She’s on a mission and nothing’s going to stand in her way, especially not her mission’s target.

Despite the riot of personality threading through the Red Hoods, their compound is neatly organized, and it takes Kara no time to find the gang’s leader balanced on a balcony edge of hanger, heels tapping on the support struts. She’s become accustomed to Jason’s appearance, the dark hair sweeping over his forehead, the stubble dotting his chin, and the perpetual sneer steering his rugged good looks towards burdened.

Kara would’ve thought it was the only way Jason’s face sat if she hadn’t seen the man flirting with Nightwing at GCG when she first stumbled into the dust. When he’s smiling, only ever at Nighting, he’s a whole other person.

“What are you doing here?” Jason calls. Somehow his frown deepens. Just her luck to catch him on a bad day.

“Just a neighborly visit from your favorite lady from the garage.”

“I don’t like any of you well enough to have a favorite.” Jason says brusquely. “Let me save you some time: the Red Hoods ain’t looking to buy whatever trouble you’re selling.”

“I’m doing well, thank you for asking. Such a gracious host.” Kara unclips a data conduit from her belt and tosses it up. Jason snatches it from the air, and finally there’s a flicker of interest in his gaze. He twists it into the light.

“What’s this?”

“I could tell you,” Kara says, grin curling, “Or you could just read it yourself.”

Jason snorts. “You’re really bad at this,” he says, rolling to his feet. He disappears into the shadows, and Kara follows, alighting on the metal balcony and dipping through the open sliding doors.

The office maintains the same order that the garage, the shops, even the mess hall exudes. Everything from the metal wall decorations to the paper plans are neatly placed. A curved roof arcs over the space supported by metal beams spreading widthwise. From beside the desk, Kara can overlook the entire hanger below, which is abuzz with activity. Judging by the few heads that duck to release her gaze, they can see Kara too. Red Hoods move from vehicle to vehicle welding, painting, securing.

Jason drops into a stark chair behind the desk. Kara starts towards a more lavish seat, plush and pillowed enough for three bodies, but Jason’s dark glare and a grunt tells her that one is off limits. Sighing, she drops into a more utilitarian chair. It’s not nearly as comfortable or inviting as the other one. Maybe she should’ve paid attention to Harper’s warning.

When it becomes clear that Jason isn’t planning on engaging her any further, Kara pushes, asking, “Bad at what?”

An arched brow meets her question, she adds, “You said I was bad at this? What are you talking about?”

“The whole art of negotiating. Setting up a mark. Drawing out the suspense…. You gotta make things interesting.” Jason’s hands waves the thin metal through the air in a move she’d only seen used by Nightwing, three drinks deep and sitting on the bar, regaling her with more tales of his time on the Freescape. The data conduit reappears with a flourish. He slips it into the reader, which kind of belabors his entire argument, and Kara, flipping heavy blond hair over one shoulder, says so.

“You’re reading it, aren’t you? In fact, I’d say I’m the best negotiator the garage has. I’m charming, and if I need to, I can be super charming.” She crushes her fist into her palm. The impact sends a swell of air through the room.

“And we’re all thanking the stars there’s only one of you,” Jason says, blandly. He lapses into a studying type of silence that’s calming until Kara hears the stutter in his heartbeat. Jason releases a low curse. “I don’t fucking believe it,” he declares.

“Believe it, buster. And keep reading.” She doesn’t bother hiding the glee in her voice, and on the inside, she’s preening.

Two weeks ago, GCG received word of an unclaimed wellspring in the cliffs deep within No Man’s Land and sent a team out to confirm. The data conduit not only maps the well’s location, it also outlines an offer from GCG to the Red Hoods for equal partnership to tap, build, pipe, and protect the water source. The proposed aqueduct cuts through Red Hood territory providing them with direct access.

Water has so many meanings on the Freescape. Life, stability, but also conflict. The Garden jealously guards its water systems, and they’ve claimed most of the clean groundwater deposits within a week’s ride in all directions of the dome. If the Garden has caught wind of this source, they’d already be out there trying to secure it. And this is why the garage is trying to entice the Red Hoods into siding with them.

Anything the Red Hoods lay claim to, they fight for, cradle to grave.

Kara’s expecting a quick agreement, because the proposed partnership is straight forward, the information accurate, and the need for fresh, clean water paramount. Direct access to water is exactly what Jason should want. The Red Hoods raid and trade for water, the most precious commodity in this hellish world, and they’d have a source right in their backyard.

But Jason takes his time. And maybe that’s something to note about the Red Hood when his sweetheart is out joyriding around the wastes: time moves awfully slow with him gone.

Kara swivels from side to side in her chair, while the sweltering sun peaks and then begins its slow descent. On the hour mark, she lets out a loud yawn, rattling the metal walls and ruffling Jason’s hair. He doesn’t even flinch, let alone look up to meet her blue eyes twinkling with unrepentant glee.

“Damn, Todd. Are you ever going to finish? I’m dying here.”

“You know where the door is,” Jason says, lazily. “Use it.”

“I need an answer.”

“You’ll get your answer after I fucking make sure the garage isn’t going to get us all killed with these plans.” He waves the pad.

“That might take ages.”

“At least another day,” Jason agrees. “Maybe two once I call my seconds in to look it over.”

“Really? I thought you were in charge.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “Decisions made for the good of the Hoods are done with equanimity and consensus.“

“And those two words takes two days? Ugh.” Kara’s cheeks puff and deflate in another heavy sigh. “I was told to come back with your answer. That means you’re stuck with me in the meantime.”

“Hell no. Nowhere in this message does it say I’ve got to keep you, and I don’t recall anyone asking you to stay.” Jason stares down at the hanger floor. “Did anyone ask this one,” he jabs a thumb in Kara’s direction, “To stay?”

A chorus of “No, not me,” rise up, and then, “But I wouldn’t mind if she stayed boss!”

“Is that Brown?” Jason pops up, rushing to the iron bar and leaning over. Kara joins him, curious to see her would be defender. She spies a pretty blonde curled over a metal table, cheeks pink with laughter.

Jason scoffs. “Should’ve known that was you, Stephanie. Always ruining my plans.”

Grinning, Stephanie sashays to the hanger center. “Were you gonna kick her to the flats for the night?”

“Yes,” Jason says, and a split second later, Kara punches his arm.

“Hey!”

“Sounds like a plan that needs to be ruined, boss,” says Stephanie. “I’ll keep her company.”

“She’s your responsibility,” Jason warns.

Kara waves down brightly. “Don’t worry, I can be on my best behavior.”

Stephanie smirks. “Now where’s the fun in that?

Kara’s smile turns thoughtful. “Looks like I’ve found something to entertain myself for … two days, you said? Might want to make it three if you need the time, Todd. Wouldn’t want to rush you.” She leaps over the railing, landing lightly.

“You’re not staying another night,” Jason calls out after her.

“Don’t worry,” Stephanie says, threading an arm through Kara’s and dragging her to the bay doors. “I know how to be _hospitable,_ and you can stay with me as long as you like.”

There’s a playful pinch to her side that makes Kara’s toes curl. Jason forgotten as she sucks her lower lip between her teeth she says, “That’ll suit me just fine.”

* * *

The deal keeps Jason occupied. The strategy enough to pour over with Kyle until his head swam with the details. He dreamt of the aqueduct that second night, and woke up reaching to Dick’s side of the bed. His mouth had been full of a half-dreamed concern—he wouldn’t give up any ground or protection for his people. But water, Dick, he’d thought. Dick was always bringing home new treasures from his trips. And it felt like, for once, Jason had one to share with him.

In the dawn light, the words catch in his mouth. Dick’s side of the bed is empty.

He’s become accustomed to waking up when Dick does. Dick sleeps restlessly more often than not, and if Jason isn’t awake, if his hands aren’t there to coax Dick back down to the sheets for a few more minutes of rest, Dick will sneak out to catch the sun, or an early ride. His bright blue eyes are always fixed on the horizon like he’s waiting for something to come racing through the desert toward them.

Jason finds himself staring out their bedroom window, his eyes on the rising sun, and a layer of tension clinging to his skin. He wonders if this is the feeling that pulls Dick up to drive to the perimeter of their territory. If he could, Jason would stand here until he saw a figure cutting through the heat haze, racing home.

Jason doesn’t know when Dick will get in, but there’s anticipation swimming through his veins.

He settles into the routine he’s built over the past year: coffee, sunrise, getting dressed. Then Jason moves through tidying the already clean room. The items he winds up dusting and adjusting are things that aren’t his own. It’s Dick’s frames of tattered posters from Gotham’s past, a set of energy batons, an unfinished circuit board he'd been working on before leaving. Dick’s jacket is usually strewn over the back of the chair, but Jason has taken to wearing it. Part of it is payback of course, but it feels like it would be wrong if it was shut up in the closet.

It always happens when Dick’s gone, this sudden awareness and the question that repeats at random times during the day: when did his life become this?

Before the strange reckoning between GCG and the Garden happened, before Jason was pushed to the center of the ring and told to take control, time seemed to be another rare resource. There was always an errand to run, a problem to solve, some trouble to find. But now that life on the Freescape seems settled, now that Jason oversees the people that make his strange family, each second stretches into an hour of time he can’t seem to fill.

Oh, there are always plans to outline, tasks to delegate, discipline to hand down, safety to ensure. He’s not the one volunteering for every dangerous mission anymore and certainly not alone. But he wants to be, if only to have something to do that fills the stretches of empty time. There’s always been a restlessness in his bones. The horizon calls for him too.

Then he’d met Dick Grayson, a challenger who, with something as simple as a smile, made the mad, rushing world slow down and turned the impossible into reality. Never in his short life had Jason met someone quite like Dick Grayson, and he constantly wrestled with the conflicting need to catch him and hold him close but also hold the entire world back in order to let Dick fly free. Funny that Jason thought he’d ever have a choice in the matter with someone as headstrong as Dick.

Little by little, Dick would come in with a thing he couldn’t wait for Jason to see. Sometimes it was new salvaged tech to help all the Red Hoods. Jason liked the things Dick found just for them. Like the drip-coffee maker. The rarer finds from his travels that adorned their rooms. They’re the kind of things that show they’re building a life together.

The base wakes in stages, and there’s a low-level excitement building throughout the gang, and Jason feels it build upon his own. It’s the day of Dick's return, and all the Red Hood’s know it.

They’re a little louder, a little less likely to avoid his gaze, but that excitement ebbs as the sun slides behind the ridge without the roar of Nightwing’s bike filling the space.

Dick’s smile had been so easy, so confident when he pressed soft words against Jason’s lips. “Trust me,” he said. “We’ll get it done. Three days tops.”

Trust. Another scarce resource on the Freescape. Jason’s fist aches as he turns on his heels and stalks back up the stairs to their place. He’d waited well into the early twilight hours, but nothing. It was a small torture going to bed alone again.

On the fourth day of Dick’s mission, Jason sends Duke and Cass to sweep the edges of Red Hood territory, including the safe houses concealed in the frozen dunes and wriggling cliff walls. He also sends Kara back to the garage with a tentative agreement. The original had been painfully written out in Jason’s unsteady hand. He’d finished it as a way to keep himself occupied and then made sure it was copied by Kyle so the final result would be somewhat presentable.

But when Cass and Duke return without news the next morning and still no Dick, Jason slings his wrench across the room.

He tugs Dick’s jacket over his shoulders, and stalks towards his bike.

“I’m going to the garage!”


	4. Gotham City Garage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been five days since Dick should have come home. Jason goes looking for answers - and when you need answers on the Freescape you go to Barda Free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to everyone reading, and everyone reading and commenting! It's wonderful to hear what y'all think of it so far. Please enjoy this update!

It’s midday when Jason arrives at the Gotham City Garage in a roar of unrestrained aggression. Over two dozen other vehicles line the strip, colorful bikes and stark utility trucks built to withstand the unforgiving desert. That’s two dozen more than should be around at this time of day, and Jason’s tense mood sours when each drop of his heavy boots on the concrete is met by the strum of guitars and laughter from inside GCG.

Jason slams through the front doors. A few people look up at the commotion and then immediately remember something far more important swirling in their drinks as Jason’s eyes rake over them.

He recognizes a few faces in the room. Guy and his pals lean against the far wall, a mug of cold brew in each of their hands. Huntress throws him a glance before turning back to her conversation. There’s even a postal traveler here recognizable by his pale blue coat and bag of letters drooped over his back like a beetle. But they’re not who Jason’s searching for. He heads for the bar and the imposing woman behind it.

She’s tall with steely blue eyes and muscles honed from years of combat, yet she looks ageless, the same as Jason remembers when, on his eleventh birthday, he stumbled up the steps with the Red Hoods. Her hair is shorn down the sides and the remaining hair is woven into a loose braid from the center of her head to the small of her back. Over his years coming into the bar, Jason’s heard her referred to as many things. He just calls her Barda.

Barda looks at him with a knowing smirk that makes Jason want to sneer in response but also straighten his hair. He does neither, choosing to settle onto the barstool instead.

She reaches for a glass bottle behind her, asking, “What’ll you have?”

“Why do you ask when you already know?”

“Because one day, I expect you to surprise me.” Barda scoops ice into the glass, then spills honeyed whiskey over it. “What’s your question?”

The glass fits nicely in the palm of Jason’s hand, and the whiskey goes down smooth, soothing the ache in Jason’s throat enough to ask.

“Nightwing come through here?”

Barda gives him a curious look. “Last time I saw him, he was reminiscing about the bad times with Selina right over there.” She points at a booth in the corner. “That was two weeks ago? You were here that night. Playing darts with that red-headed boy that fancies you.”

Jason scoffs, “Fuck off,” and Barda laughs, saying, “You ask a funny question, you’re gonna get a funny answer, kid.”

“That’s not what I want to know,” Jason replies. “And I don’t wanna ask twice.”

Jason’s gambling face is clean, calm eyes, straight lips, no twitching, but Barda’s known him for a very long time. She straightens from the bar, arms flexing with her full attention.

“Kara said Nightwing was absent when she came to visit you. Didn’t say you were concerned. But now you’ve stormed in here like you don’t know where he is. That is a surprise.” Barda leans against the bar. “You misplaced your boy, Hood?”

If it were anyone else and a year earlier, Jason would send a fist flying in reply, regardless of tentative partnerships. But he’s been curbing those impulses lately. He’s been learning to take the words and flip them in his head and find something useful to say to the audience he’s speaking to, use that knowledge to make the words really count.

And he knows from experience that Barda will lay him flat on his ass when he is brash enough to fight in her bar.

“You’ve run with him. Think I'd be able to keep him in one place if he didn’t want to be there?” Jason huffs.

Barda leans away, and there’s something in the way she’s looking at him. Her voice is lowered so as not to be overheard when she says, “You two have been riding around, thick as thieves with that gang of yours. Anyone with eyes can see he’s wanted to be there. So what’s the real read, kid?”

Trust, Jason thinks in the silence of her question. It’s something he’s been building up here. Not just between GCG and the Red Hoods. But a personal trust with Barda as a person, not another leader.

Barda knows him and has never wavered in her stern- regard for him. She’ll tell him the truth if he gives her the truth.

“Five days ago, he goes off on a favor with that curious cat from the Garden. He was supposed to be back already.”

“Supposed to be, huh?” Barda asks. “How long?”

“More than a day.”

Barda makes a soft sound. She’s listening.

“No word from either of them. It’s not right,” Jason says the words casually, like a low level ache hasn’t descended on his body since he went to bed last night. Barda eyes him, the weight of his words being stretched apart, then nods.

“I don’t know anything, kid. But I wouldn’t be too concerned. Nightwing’s a grown man with the devil’s own luck, and if he’s partnered with Selina, than he’s doubly lucked out.”

Jason clenches around the glass. “Looking for information, Barda, not whatever the hell that was.”

She stares at him, blue eyes piercing, and he remembers the first time he’d seen her fight at the garage. Her opponent had been a big man, stupidly drunk and spitting the kind of disrespect that would earn the chain from Black Mask. Barda had looked at him the same way she’s looking at Jason now, calm, assessing, and then she made her move.

“Give me a minute then. Natasha has spent more time coordinating with that curious cat of yours. If there’s something worth knowing, she’ll tell you.” Barda turns away, and after a sweep of the bar patrons, disappears into the backroom.

Jason nods, then hunkers down to wait. He’s not leaving until he has some news. Jason feels a little out of sorts in Dick’s borrowed riding jacket. GCG is hot at this time of day, despite the fans whirling overhead. His shirt is thin and clinging to his skin under the jacket.

At least Dick has a part of Jason with him, wherever he might be. Two actually, if Jason considered the bike Dick’s riding. But just as Dick has done everything else in Jason’s life, he’d gone and made that his own too.

Natasha appears out of the back, dressed like she’s been working on the gang’s bikes and not, more likely, crunching numbers for the business. She’s wearing coveralls, and the straps of her welding goggles are perpetually hanging around her neck. Ready, for when she’s got to build a motorcycle from the ground up.

She’s the founder of the GCG rebels. And while Barda rides out with the crew, runs operations in the heat of the desert, Natasha is the group’s heart and compass. Everyone in the bar has watched her stand on the counter, and give her speech about the cities John Henry Irons built. And the terrible history of mechanized competition between Luthor and Wayne that filled the streets of paved cities with Metallos that drove them into the wastelands.

Jason doesn’t remember a time before the desert, and riding to survive it. But out here, Natasha’s stories are gospel. Everyone believes them.

“Didn’t think I’d see you so soon, Red Hood.” Natasha’s voice is soft as sunrise but weighs in the air like heated steel. A voice to be heard. “I hear you want to test the bounds of your partnership with the garage.”

Jason doesn’t look at Barda, because he can smell a power play on the wind. And it hurts to bite back his anger even an inch. “Just looking for information. If you have it, share it. If you don’t, I’ll be back on the road before you can blink.”

The weight of her stair is impossible to escape, so Jason meets it the only way he knows how: head on. Finally, Natasha asks, “Did you get any details about the job before he left?”

“Just what Catwoman came to him with. Three day run to retrieve data from a Garden repository.” 

“Do you know the target class?”

“Blue,” Jason replies, because Dick had explained the threat level these ladies assigned to their missions. Dangerous in his opinion. Relaxing for even a moment is the instant your mission goes wrong. Better going in knowing it might be your -

“That help any?” Jason asks, cutting his own thought off before it can bite him.

Natasha shrugs. “It might if he told you anything else.”

Beneath the bar, Jason squeezes his fist frustrated because Dick hadn’t, and Jason hadn’t pushed. He never needed to before. “He didn’t.”

“You’re sure,” she presses.

“Yes, I’m fucking sure,” Jason snaps. “He’s a freelancer, and Catwoman plays everything close to the chest. If I knew anything else, I wouldn’t be wasting my fucking time here.”

“And that’s why he’s asking,” Barda intercedes. “So seriously, Tasha, if you know something, give the kid the info.”

“I’m not trying to be opaque here. Hoods are welcome at GCG, have been for a while, but our aims don’t always line up. I’ve got people to protect, this place,” she sighs. “But since Nightwing is unofficially one of ours—”

“He’s one of mine.” The words are out of Jason’s mouth before he can think.

Natasha levels him with a tight smile. “Oh, is he now? And that’s why you’re so concerned with him? Because Nightwing joined the Red Hoods? Thought I heard you say he was a freelancer.”

A part of Jason seethes at that smile. Because no, Dick hasn’t declared alliances, but also, yes he _has._

He’s been with them for so long now by Freescape standards—nine months since he crawled into Jason’s bed and didn’t leave before sunrise, almost a year since their explosive meeting. And even before anyone started looking to him like he was Jason’s left hand to Kyle’s right, Dick had been in everyone’s business. Always there with a kind word, advice, or a well needed shock to the system. How many strays had he brought to the Red Hood’s? 

Maybe it’s a bit new, two untamed hearts learning to lean on one another. But the door is always open, Jason made that clear from the beginning, and Dick has always comes back on time. Even if he sent word of an issue, he still walked through the door when he said he would with his cool grin and something else that’s identifiably _Dick Grayson_ in his eyes.

And he took Jason’s jacket when he walked out the door. Wrapped himself in something that marked Dick as his. Jason can remember the feeling of running his thumb over the Hood insignia patch, soft threads against his dry skin, before he’d let Dick disappear on the horizon.

“He’s one of us,” Jason says, not quite repeating the sentiment.

“That’s news to me. But the bad news for you is that I don’t have information about Selina’s latest job. Whatever she’s running isn’t with us.” Natasha pauses, a spark of something in her eyes that makes Jason rise to his feet.

“You know something. You fucking know something.”

“I don’t.”

“You do,” Jason growls.

She flicks a glance Barda's way, then sighs. “There was a bust up on the Garden roads west of here. Sent the scouts out.”

“We thought it was you at first,” Barda says, and Natasha murmurs her agreement.

“But it wasn’t you. Wasn’t Diana acting on her own. The place was a wreck. And made that way by someone who used brute force for a smash and grab.”

The buzz building in Jason’s chest dissipates. “That isn’t Dick’s style.”

“No,” Natasha agrees. “It isn’t Selina’s either.” She tilts her head into her palm. “You might try Pamela Isley for leads, though. Has he told you he runs jobs for her?”

Jason nods stiffly. Dick had mentioned the woman with the green thumb, but it had been weeks since he’d last took a request from her.

“The last time Selina freelanced, it was for her. Good pay for easy work,” Natasha says. She writes down the coordinates on a cocktail napkin in an old fashioned gesture.

Jason nods again despite the anger lashing inside his chest. “This wasn’t a total waste of time,” he mutters.

Natasha gets the last word in as Jason turns to go. “You’re the one looking for a complex answer when anyone here could tell you the simple truth: Nightwing is a runner, baby. It’s what he does. No ties, no home, no loyalties. It’s what gets him out of trouble every time.”

Sneering, Jason slaps down his credit and pushes away from the bar. That’s not Dick, Jason thinks, storming to the door. That’s not him at all.

* * *

The sun has begun its slow descent to the horizon when Jason leaves the garage, and he chases it west over the hard packed ground to the black roads. He finds the wreckage easily. Three large transport trucks sit abandoned in the middle of the old highway and a fourth lay beached on its side with hulls are blackened by smoke. The scent of gasoline and smoke is redolent in the air, although the heat is long gone.

Frowning, Jason surveys the debris. Whatever cargo was being transported has been picked clean as the dead crumbling together a short distance away. All gardeners by their melted jackboots. The onboard tech is fried. No manifest, no coordinates, no surveillance, no information.

GCG were right to dismiss this attack by the Hoods. There was more precision in their planning, more attention paid to what could come from these raids. His teams would've stripped the vehicles down to the frame, time permitting. This is wasteful. This is brute force like the Masks used to run. And there’s nothing here to connect Dick to the raid either. He and Selina didn’t pack enough firepower to take down four transport vehicles, not like this.

Waste of fucking time.

Thoughts churning, Jason drops into his seat and turns back to the horizon. He takes the southern route back to the outpost. Because it’s the road he first met the laughing thief that had stolen his prized motorcycle.

The memories slip through Jason’s mind in full color and feeling as if the event happened yesterday and not a year ago.

Exhaustion had sunk deep in his bones after three days spent freeing the Red Hoods from Black Mask’s tyrannical fist. When he arrived back at the base, he’d been so tired he could barely appreciate the triumphant shouts of his gang. His. After months of planning, the Red Hoods were free.

They had pulled into the hanger in a roar of engines after racing through darkened roads, blood and exhilaration racing through their veins, war whoops shattering the air as they called to one another freely. The excitement came to an immediate halt at the sight of three of their own hanging upside down from the rafters, writhing frustratedly. And below them - the blank space where Jason’s bike should rest. Not the one he rode, but the one that taught him to dream.

It was bequeathed to him by Wingman, the first leader of the Red Hoods Jason had ever known. Wingman may be a blurry haze in Jason’s memories—hard lines, stubble on sharp cheeks, a laugh that carried—but he remembered the bike and the way Wingman taught him to take every piece of it apart only to build it back up again. He tinkered with it throughout his life, and had finally perfected the powertrain, turning the menacing vehicle into a terrifying predator on the desert of the Freescape.

And someone had the nerve to steal it from within his fucking home.

It hadn’t taken Jason very long to catch up with the culprit, who had been cruising down the broken highway like vengeance wasn’t stalking him. Dick’s jacket had been completely open, so it flapped at his back like a cape. He’d even turned around in his seat waved at them, flashing smooth skin blemished by dark, swirling ink. And then he had proceeded to lead Jason and ten of his best riders on a merry chase from No Man’s Land to the Freescape, down narrow trails and under curving rock formations created by the great blast. Dick outrode every single one of them, that brilliant sonnovabitch, rode the tread from their tires and the gas from their tanks. Jason’s cheeks had been red as the sun when his engine jerked and sputtered to a stop. And the bastard had swung back around at them, raising his helmet’s faceplate and revealing a handsome face and a wicked grin.

Jason’s miserable life had changed irrevocably for the second time in as many hours, and he wouldn’t ever go back.

* * *

The base is alert when Jason returns, eyes on him, riders ready, but he storms through the ranks to the back of the hanger. It slides open, revealing a staircase winding into the earth where the Red Hood keep their weapons.

Kyle follows down the stairs, an anxious look on his face.

“Any news?”

Jason growls. “They didn’t know a fucking thing.”

Storage containers line the walls on three sides. The forth holds the shells of experimental weapons, each notched with the Luthor logo. Jason finds the correct serial number on the corresponding cache and starts pulling weapons. A heavy rifle, two high-velocity pistols, and a modified single-grip energy shotgun he liked to call God Almighty.

A sling of ammo is tossed at him, and Jason snatches it from the air and slides it over one shoulder. Kyle’s gaze is pensive. “What are you going to do?”

Jason pauses, holsters drawing close on his thighs. “Nightwing is one of ours. I’m going to ride out there and find some answers. And if he needs help, I’ll answer the call.”

Kyle nods as if he already knew the answer, and perhaps he was waiting for it because he says, “We’re ready to ride, Jason. You don’t have to go alone.”

“No,” Jason says, halting him with one harsh edge to his voice. “No. I need a strong presence here if he returns before me, or if something pops off. Protect our territory and the roads to and from the No Man’s Land and the Freescape.” He starts back up the stairs, then stops. He hears Dick in his head urging him to think first and then act.

There’s the issue of the aqueduct, and uneasy alliances that he’d barely managed not to blow up. Gardeners could be headed in their direction for the water. He trusted the gang to hold No Man’s Land. The territory would help by safeguarding itself—rough, and hard to navigate, the advantage was the Red Hoods ability to mobilize and act.

He starts back up the stairs again. “Did that communication thing actually work?”

“The array? Yes, the team’s checked in at their predetermined intervals. Clear com lines each time.”

“Then get Wildcat and Tim on the line. They need to round up the other scouts and pull to the back acres. Have them prepare our phase two base just in case.”

“I’ll have Cloud Nine ride out to meet them.”

“Good. Hey, make sure Wildcat warns that caravan. Tell ‘em to give the Garden territory wide berth over the next few days too, just in case.”

“You think it’s the Garden, then?”

“When is it not? Dick’s fearless, and when that black cat is involved, reckless. But he can out ride and out think any thing on this rock. If neither of them are back, it has to be because of the Garden. Won’t know for sure until I get out there though.

“If it is the Garden, we'll need cover. I want a crew out there making noise in the opposite direction of the coordinates I send you. Bronze Tiger and Arsenal. Orphan and the Signal,” Jason rattles off his best fighters who know how to bang on the enemy's gates and come back alive. Maybe he should have more faith in Dick’s abilities, knows by the scars on his body that he’s made it through a hell of his own. But it’s been five days, and Dick hasn’t come home.

“They just came in," says Kyle. 

"Rest them up. Put their rides on the rack. I want them back out there raising hell when I call. Make it a boomstick raid. Make them remember the Red Hoods are here.”

“The Garden will never own us,” his lieutenant swears.

And Jason speaks the response. They’re words written on his bones, he’s a Red Hood through and through. But they’ve never been uttered with more truth. “We’ll burn the world down before they can try. Red Hoods will always ride free.”


	5. Poisonous Blooms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So you're Grayson’s boy,” Pamela says, tilting her head to give him a slow, searching look._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Change of Pov. in this chapter and expansion on the GCG world outside of Jason's experience. 
> 
> Reader advisory: Batman is not a good guy in GCG 'verse and that will be reflected in chapters going forward. Please heed the tags.

There’s a whisper on the trees of a visitor. Someone treads over the vines that stretch across the fertile land and climb the tallest of the trees, searching for light that has broken through the thick canopy, and Pamela feels their pain refracted and transmitted. It raises the hair on her forearm. Pamela puts down her wrench.

It’s been a long time since someone has approached her territory uninvited. She wonders how long they stared at her structure-turned-green-house looking for an entrance. Her home is a re-appropriated early model of a Wayne Dome. The company had mastered soils capable of sustaining biodiversity, and construction in the desert. But not a hermetic seal to keep the polluted air of the Freescape out. She’d found it discarded, uninhabited, when she escaped the Garden like so many others. It had been a gift after a series of hard blows, including the curse of emerging meta-powers in a time when Wayne and Luthor were seeking out and eliminating them indiscriminately.

From the outside, the dome looked like an oasis. Trees growing stark and strong so that the shimmering glass casing was almost unnoticeable. It looked like the plants grew in a sheltering shape, curling overhead. But her visitor must have investigated the surface, reached out and touched only to find a barrier between their fingers and Pamela’s plants. She can imagine how they traced the outside, fingers looking for any break or hinge, or anyway inside. With a little handiness and the tech savvy they could have gotten inside.

That wouldn’t explain how they found the place or why her plants hadn’t killed them at the door.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Harley’s fingers snap her out of thought. They tuck under her chin and pull Pamela’s gaze upward.

She’d been deep in the reverberating psychic messages from her plants, and she hadn’t heard her girl come in.

She rises from beside Harley’s bike, and accepts the open arms and the comfort of Harley curling around her. She’d only return from the Garage the night before, yawning so large her jaw had cracked with it. Her and the hyenas had taken over Pamela’s bed, laughing. Pamela had been hoping to tune Harley’s bike before she’d woken up.

“Just an unwelcome guest,” Pamela says.

“The plants will be getting a good meal then,” Harley says. Her fingers curl and pull at Pamela’s hair. She presses a toothy smile to Pamela’s throat.

Pamela hums, thinking up a macabre reply when the oddest of sensations comes through from her plants. Acceptance, warm and bright and the vines are caressing arms as they let the visitor pass.

Pamela isn’t expecting anyone, and her own fear battles the feeling of safety being reflected by her plants. If someone has managed to trick her babies into thinking they’re not a threat—

“On second thought. Get Bud and Lou up,” Pamela tells Harley. “I think this one has earned a welcoming party.”

They race through the terrain, and the plants part for them. Their visitor is further in than she was expecting. Past the Black Bat Flowers that stretch their tendrils out, reaching for her as they drive by. Just south of her extraordinarily sized venus fly trap, they find a man dressed in riding leathers. He has a rifle, and a shot-gun visibly strapped to his body. Pamela can only suspect that there’s more, but he doesn’t reach for them. As she skids to a stop in front of the man he pulls down the red bandana on his face. He’s covered in desert dirt and there’s a fury shining in his eyes.

Bud and Lou wriggle out of their sidecar as soon Harley brakes beside her. They race at the man, laughing and snarling in turn. They drool all over themselves as they jump at him, but as they do he lifts his arms up. There’s a flash of blue along the sleeve. He’s wearing a familiar black leather jacket with blue stripes, one Pamela knows doesn’t belong to him. The hyena’s noticed the jacket before she did - they could probably smell the familiar scent on him, so for all their energetic jumping, they’re as gentle as puppies trying to push the man over to drool on him.

That explains why the plants let him pass unharmed. Harley whistles loud when she notices it too.

The man brushes the hyenas off, more unperturbed than he ought to be. His eyes stay on Pamela, and he asks, “I need to speak with who’s in charge here. If it’s not you, take me to her.”

Harley lifts her arms wide, dramatically gesturing to the three of them, and poisonous plants towering over them. She bares her teeth like Bud and Lou, amused to the point of cruelty. “I’m afraid this is the whole welcoming party, sweetheart,” she says before collapsing forward to rest on the handlebars.

Pamela catches her eye. ‘Red Hoods,’ Harley mouths unsubtly, although that doesn’t mean much to Pamela. She doesn’t enter the desert often, so she’s not sure who he is or why he matters—Freescape business, like GCG business, is Harley’s territory. Pamela likes to keep to herself. Better to protect her territory, and her plants.

“What brings you this south of No Man’s Land?” Harley asks. “Thought after the fight you opened in your own crew you’d know to mind your business.”

“Thought the payload we swiped from you would’ve taught you to find your own business,” is the quick, sharp reply. Then, he takes a deep breath. When he speaks again he says, “I’m looking for Nightwing.”

His voice spoke volumes, spoke of the mountains he’d move to find Dick Grayson. The hair rises on Pamela’s arms again. It feels like electricity in the air. How very interesting. Pamela studies him quietly. Interesting but foolish of him to search for Nightwing here.

“That Gardener? And you?” Harley squeals with laughter before he even answers. “Oh honey, that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in years!”

The man’s hands tighten around the helmet he’s carrying around. “You know what I think is funny,” he asks voice low. “I heard how you lost it on your last GCG mission, Quinn. Word is Barda is reconsidering—”

“Shut up!” Harley hisses back.

Around them comes a rustling sound, quiet at first then growing like a whispering crowd.

“You’re in our home. You should be respectful,” Pamela chides watching as he turns his gaze outward to the creeping undergrowth. She doesn’t ask what he meant. If Harley has something to tell her, then Harley will. When the time is right.

From the trees above, flowers stretch on their stems and branches. Their the soft pink of Ingrid almonds. They look as though they’re reaching out to touch and comfort. Strange, Pamela thinks that they’re so comfortable just because of the jacket. She hadn’t realized she cared so for Dick Grayson, and by extension her plants did too.

“He talked about this place once. He called it special. Probably should’ve added spooky too,” he says the words quietly, to himself most likely, but they carry along the soft grass, the pollen in the air, and Pamela knows his name before he says it. “The name’s Jason.”

“So you are Grayson’s boy.” Pamela tilts her head giving him a slow, searching look. She doesn’t expect to see this Red Hood’s expression grows soft with pride, but he does, acknowledging her words with a curt nod.

“He went on a mission with your mutual contact from the Garden. They’ve missed the return window.”

“And you came here why?”

“Because I’m trying to find him, and you’re my only lead.”

Harley puts two fingers up against her helmet like bunny ears. Her smile is unkind when she says, “If you’ve lost Boy Blue, maybe it’s because the Big Bat called him back.”

Harley hadn’t warmed up to Dick. _‘Once a Gardener, always a Gardener,’_ she’d sneered the last time Dick had been by. It was better than when he’d stumbled in the first time, freshly on the run and looking for someone to remove his ride-along. Harley had nearly taken off his head, and had pouted for a week in the GCG bar she’d been so mad at Pamela.

She looks like she’s fixing to make trouble, and push their visitor into a fight.

Pamela watches Jason carefully as she decides how to keep that from happening, and if she even wants to. She thinks of the first time she saw Enforcer Grayson sunk so low he’d crawled into her home. He’d been lost in all senses of the word, and reminded her of a wounded animal. He’d been as likely to wander into her venus fly trap and be swallowed whole as he was to find himself in Lex’s clutches. Something had made her help then, and he’d paid that back with diligent work as a courier. And he hadn’t brought any bats to her doorstep which was more than she could say for Harley, if she was honest.

“Did you bring your bike or is it outside?” Pamela asks. She sees surprise on Harley’s face, and ignores it. It’s hard to explain her sympathy for Dick to Harley. So she doesn’t.

She mounts her bike, and waits for Jason to join her. “Come on. We’re going to my shop. It’s near the exit.” She smiles as Jason sidesteps the tender embrace of a flowering chocolate vine. “The safe one.”

Harley practically snarls. She kicks the bike back into gear and whistles for Bud and Lou. Pamela feels Jason sling and arm around her waist. The other clutches the seat as she revs her engine too.

Harley circles the clearing with Lou and Bud, goading the hyenas until their cackling yips join her. There’s a chorus of her and hyena laughter over the roar of her bike. The sound disappears back toward the house.

What’s done is done, Pamela thinks. She can make good with Harley later. Better to let her slam doors and throw wrenches at her bike in peace than bring Jason into their home. She follows Harley’s path for a quarter mile before turning toward the structure she’s been using for tattooing passing GCG riders. She feels the way Jason tenses throughout the ride, always expecting to impact with walls of flora just before the plants part, giving way to clear paths for them.

* * *

“How did you find me?” she asks as she leads him to her work room.

A flat table sits in the room’s center below a large skylight. The afternoon sun drifts haloing the space. Green plants twist their heads up seeking the warmth.

“I can’t imagine Dick told you the location of this dome.”

“Natasha Irons told me about you.”

“Ah, the GCG, I was afraid they knew where I lived,” she jokes. “But your boy, Grayson, gets around. He’s a good courier. Discreet. Which isn’t common out here, is it?”

She sits down beside the table and indicates the empty chair. She watches Jason carefully when she adds, “And he’s got that smile that makes people want to trust them.”

Half grimace, half fond grin, Jason’s expression is complicated when he says, “Yeah. That’s the thing about him. He has a smile for everyone.”

“But they’re all different. Very few of them genuine.”

“You know it when you see it though,” Jason replies almost defensive and it makes Pamela smile.

“Yes, I suppose you’ve seen more than most out here. He may have mentioned you a time or two before he got to know you better. And after, of course.”

She watches as the words reach him, turning something inside him down. He puts his guns down so he can sit down. He deflates with an audible sigh and runs hands through his hair.

“So you’ve spent a lot of time with him then?”

She’d been in his head removing Garden tech and that wasn’t a short process. What she says instead is, “There was enough time while we were finishing his ink to see what being out here has done to him. Not enough to tell you where he’s been or where he was going.”

He had happened across this place by accident, or so he said, a wanderer who thought he’d found paradise after weeks riding in the desert. He offered his name, but she didn’t take it. The Freescape is a dangerous place, and his luck must have been running out if he thought her garden a safe haven. Instead, she’d asked what he was running from, and he’d looked at her, a haunted light in his eye, and said he’s more concerned about where he’s running to. The world was spread out before him, and he was ready to fly.

For that truth, so rare in this time and place, she rewarded him with a truth of her own. A ride-along implant is not necessary to survive outside the Garden. In fact, if he hoped to fly free he was going to need it gone so it didn’t tie him to the ground. She removed it, and he left with a fraction of the weight on his shoulders lifted.

She was surprised when he came back, and offered his name again along with some information he swore would be valuable. A few weeks on the Freescape and he’d learned how to survive. This time she took both in exchange for a design for a tattoo. And when he returned a third time with inks, she agreed to become his artist.

It was a huge demon of a bird on his chest. There was no going back with that mark on him. He’d never be able to pass anonymously through the Freescape or the Domes as he had before. He was definitively closing the door on being Gardener ever again. Any crimes committed on the Freescape could be traced back to him. He’d have a signature. Bats and sentries of all kinds would know him. But that was a thing that sat unspoken between them.

“He was adamant about that point. Perhaps desperate to be known and to prove himself.” She nods to the leather chair across the room. “He even tried it here in that seat. Stoically masking the pain.”

Jason’s expression turns serious when she mentions the broken, far off look in Dick’s eye. The determined way he sat perfectly still and clenched his jaw through the whole process. She’s sure Jason’s seen a shade of it - she doubts the boy let him see more than that willingly. When she was creating shadows in the face of his demonic bird, Dick had clenched his fists so tight, trying to stave off a sound of pain or request of reprieve. Foolish boy, she thought with fondness. She’d had to explain that was making her job harder to make him take a break.

“How much do you know about him?” Pamela asks. She means it kindly, but there’s a flash of fury in Jason’s deap, ocean eyes. She wonders if he ever saw the ocean, if he knew the look he was giving her was that of crashing waves.

She changes tactics. “Do you remember when Superman fell?”

Jason looks confused. “No.” He offers a wan grin. “I know this rugged look doesn’t do me any favors, but I was born after the fall. After the Domes too. The Oldtimers used to say that it was quite the party, but I don’t think I missed much.”

“No,” Pamela says, voice soft. “I don’t think you missed very much at all.

“I believe Dick was a child when it happened. I don’t know if he remembers it—he’s never said. But I remember it well.” She carefully taps her long nails, one at a time. Thinking about that time before her dome, when her powers had come unasked for and unwelcome once it became clear Luthor and Wayne had equally evil plans for the remaining metas. Though the former had come with sugar, and the latter had lost his bright, mask of a pretty boy business man quickly in the aftermath of Superman’s death. His offering to the masses was a steady hand.

“I remember how rapidly it changed. Even if you feared humans with special abilities,” she twists her hand as if to indicate her own, and showing off the green tips of her fingers. “Well when the man from Krypton fell and was truly dead, the earth heaved. There was a lot of talk that because he’d been sent to save us, and we’d let him die, that the Freescape was our punishment. I don’t know about that. But I know it let Luthor loose. And it changed The Bat. That’s why many of us had to run. Eventually, Dick did too. If he’s gone missing when he didn’t mean to, I would suspect it’s that history catching up to him.”

While she’s explained, Pamela reached out to press a comforting hand over the white knuckles of Jason’s tight clenched fists. He has that same spark that Dick has. It makes her want to be kind. “ Unfortunately, that means I don’t have the information you need. And he doesn’t tell me about his other jobs. That’s not what I value, and so I do not collect it. The Oracle should be able to help you.”

“The Oracle. Great. Wonderful,” Jason snaps. “Just one question; who the hell is that?”

“If you’re friends with the super-girl, you would know her already. Dick started getting domestic, and it started to be harder for me to send him on dangerous jobs. Don’t tell him I said so though. He’ll mistake it as a warm feeling or friendship. But the Oracle would offer him the thrust of danger he sometimes craved. You can find her west of the Garage, in the shadow of the Toothy Paths, as Harley calls them.”

If anything, Jason’s expression turned darker. He stands offering Pamela a curt nod. “Thanks for the information. For letting me in this place and for letting me out.”

“You sound so certain of safe passage, I must be losing my touch,” she says with a smile. What’s another favor for Dick Grayson, she muses.

“Take this as well,” Pamela says, and places a thin tube in his hand. Inside are a cluster of seeds suspended in a pale green liquid.

Jason twirls it between his fingers watching the seeds disperse at the movement. They float back together eventually, inevitably, glinting in the liquid.

“What’s this?”

“A little bit of hope,” she replies. “Keep it close.

"Oh, I also suggest using it in an open area.”

* * *

Pamela watches him leave, a dark shadow swallowed by the sun, before she heads home. The garage is dark when she gets there, and the silence is more frightening that a temper tantrum would be.

“Darling?” Pamela calls as she moves upward through the winding tree roots that make up their home. Bud snuffs from the middle of the stairs, contentedly asleep and drooling. That’s a good sign. If Harley had hurt herself, or still felt like hurting both of the hyenas would be at her side.

“Harley?”

From the top of the stairs, she appears.

“Would you search for me if I were lost?” Harley asks in a small voice.

“Sweetheart,” Pamela murmurs. She can’t cross the steps quick enough.

“I know you don’t like leaving,” and she’s sniffling now. Those big tears Pamela used to think were crocodile tears before she knew her.

“Of course I would,” Pamela promises. “And I would burn down anything or anyone who got in my way.”

When they kiss, there’s a promise of flames dancing in Harley’s eyes.


	6. Ghosts on the Horizon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason Todd doesn't trust Barbara Gordon. But if she can pin down where Dick is, then Jason can meet with one of Dick's ghosts in exchange for information.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The update was unfortunately delayed by a vacation (yay!) Hopefully y'all enjoy this one. A little bit more information, and another pov. change as Jason chases clues to find Dick. 
> 
> Thank you all for your lovely comments. ♥

From the road the sands fan in all directions, an endless spread of pale that blinds and hides secrets. Jason can’t remember a time when the landscape was anything other than a sun-parched wasteland with black marks carved into stone. The last reminders of the world’s bitter end.

Jason has always found it calming. He shoots down the narrow remnants of asphalt, and the nothingness feels familiar, down to the heat and smell of sweat and oils. It feels different today, lonesome, quiet, far, strange, even though he’s in known territory—the jagged peaks claimed by the women of Gotham City Garage.

He’s not surprised to find Kara has taken her sister here. Barbara, the Oracle. Close to the garage, but in range to track communications from the Garden. Or, Jason thinks grimly, feed the Garden her own intel.

Jason thinks she’s a Garden spy hasn’t been shy about it. He and Dick have had exactly two arguments about the older Gordon sister’s sudden appearance and Jason’s suspicions.

The first had been … odd. Out of character. They fought after an evening at the garage, one of those wild, strange nights when the whole world converged on the bar in need of drink and a body to know they’re alive. Somehow, Kara had whisked her sister out of the Garden for a night on the Freescape. The Garage, still high on a victory over Luthor’s forces, had been okay with the sudden appearance. And Jason liked Kara well enough to keep a lid on his anger. She’s strong, she’s fast, quick to talk and quicker to stand up for herself and others. But Barbara’s cool reserve had been a great contrast between the two. Jason had been immediately suspicious.

Then Dick sidled up to him, an arm on his shoulder, a round of drinks for them all, and Barbara had smiled. It was like shifting into fourth gear, sure and comfortable. It transformed the tense lines of her face into something beautiful. Something Jason didn’t trust.

He’d mentioned it to Dick once they returned to base. Dick had raised a single eyebrow high and given Jason the look he truly hates, the one that’s closed off and detached from the situation. Then Dick had thrown his gloves at Jason a little too hard to be friendly

“You’re paranoid, Todd,” he’d said, spinning on his heel. “Give Babs a chance. That’s what this place is about, isn’t it?”

He’d wanted to touch Dick then, reach out for his hand and feel the warmth of his skin. He wanted to feel anchored to Dick and ask one of the million questions he’d swore he’d never utter. He wanted to know if Nightwing was Dick’s second chance. Was being with Jason just part of his yearning for redemption?

But Dick was out of reach, and Jason let it go.

The second time had been more volatile. It had been well after word of the eldest Gordon sister’s defection reached them. Dick had accepted his first courier job on Barbara’s behalf, and hadn’t returned to the base until the early evening. Jason had found him nearly two hours later resting at the top of the stairs leading to their rooms. One look at him, and Jason knew why no one has let him know that Dick was home. He was in the middle of unwinding the bandages around his wrist and forearm.

Dick painted a bleak picture like that, huddled and stubbornly trying to fix his own wounds. It was one of many small details of the man that Jason didn’t understand. Alone was the hardest thing to be out here, and everyone knew that. The Red Hoods chose to stay tight knit and united in everything, even when Black Mask’s fist choked at their throats. They rode together, broke bread together, and healed together. It was how they survived.

Birds with broken wings and no one to support them didn’t live long. It was a miracle Dick had managed out on his own as long as he had.

Jason announced his presence by stomping his way up the metal stairs. He watched as Dick’s shoulders hike up to his ears, and then, in an exhale of tension, relax. He set a cup of water and a tin of meal bread next to Dick.

“Hey,” he whispered, touching Dick’s shoulder. With slow fingers, he tilted Dick’s face towards him, marking bruises that trailed from his cheek and temple.

Shaken was the best word for Dick in that moment. It flared to life in his bright eyes, wormed its way out of Dick’s body in the form of fine tremors in his hands that he’d tried to hide from Jason. He stuffed them, shaking and bruised into the pocket of his jacket.

Dick met Jason’s quiet concern with his jaw locked and pulling his chin from Jason’s touch to look at him definitely. Rebuffed, Jason stepped back and rested his weight against the catwalk railing.

“You didn’t tell me you made it back.”

“Didn’t think I needed to,” came the stilted reply and that rankled. Jason scrubbed a hand through the back of his head, frustrated.

“Yeah, but you usually do. Job go wrong?”

It shouldn’t have sounded like a confrontation. But like a crossed rattlesnake, Jason hadn’t seen the warning signs, and Dick had bitten. Dick let loose a bitter tirade, taunting Jason with all the things he didn’t know about the Garden, about the task force, about Barbara, about her father, about Dick.

“But you still went that close to the Garden? After all that shit she’s wrapped up in?”

Dick laughed bitterly. “Of course I did. Babs knows me. She wouldn’t send me into something I couldn’t handle.”

If Dick’s previous words stung, those burned into Jason, It was a reminder of all the things Dick kept locked away, and what was worse was that someone from the Garden, a through-and-through enforcer like Barbara, knew the details of Dick’s past. She was someone that Dick trusted, apparently. One of the few people who had somehow passed Dick Grayson’s unspoken tests and were deemed worthy of knowing Dick completely

Jason was tired of being found lacking, tired of being pushed away.

“Then tell me,” he growled. “Talk to me. You think I’m stupid, then teach me.”

“Not stupid. Ignorant. You’ve never set foot inside the Garden. You’ve never known life under the Domes. Never spent a moment wondering why it was so easy to cherish it and then fear it in the same breath.” Dick closed his eyes, pained. “Then have it all disappear, leaving you without any recollection of anything wrong. Because there’s nothing wrong in the Garden. The only thing to fear is the world outside.”

“Nightwing doesn’t fear anything,” Jason said after a pause, and this time, the words lacked the charm that usually twists the phrase, and it sounded unsure. Scared.

Dick had turned away from him again, shoulders stiff, back straight, and it was an impenetrable as any wall. “Forget about it. It’s not something I want you to learn. You don’t deserve that.”

Then he’d left, leaping down from the catwalk, landing easily, striding to his bike in silence, wheeling out into the desert. Haunted, hunted, and unwilling to back down. And Jason had watched, hands clenched on the railing so tightly they throbbed, because Dick was right. He didn’t know.

Sometimes Jason feels like he doesn't know anything. Certainly not enough when it comes to Dick. The shape of his words, the way his questions about the past and the Garden land so spectacularly wrong with Dick. When that past rears its ugly head, his comfort is too simple, his touch to harsh, his need too great. It must be, because nothing he does seems to be enough for Dick to stay for Jason to comfort when he’s feeling haunted.

Jason can soothe the nightmares, and he can rub Dick’s shoulder when he’s thrumming with anxiety because he’s worried about one of his birds scouting for the first time. But the words and names for the Domes and Gardens, and what they mean to Dick, are a chasm between them.

Jason hasn’t thought about that fight in weeks, but now Dick’s back, turned to him as he walks away, is burned into his memory. And the more Jason searches, the further Dick seems to slip away into the mystery of his past.

* * *

The sun has sailed over the horizon by the time Jason arrives at the Gordon’s sisters’ place. It had been dark when he’d left Pamela’s secret garden, and he pushed into the night until his vision blurred and his shoulders cramped. He caught a few hours in a restless sleep, knowing time was precious and Dick was out there somewhere, and had woken with filmy eyes and a determined set in his jaw.

He’s surprised by the building—and old structure that’s twice as long as it is wide with twenty doors along the side. He’s never seen a building like this, and he circles it once before parking in a cluster of stone nearby. It was a living community maybe? It certainly looks like it could have housed people before the world ended.

Jason walks past the concrete pool filled with rocks and stagnant water. The fossilized remains of old tree trunks stand bone white against the dusty exterior. Eventually, he finds signs of the intercom system Pamela swore was there and presses.

A tone chimes, but before Jason can appreciate it, a heavy gate shoots up from the ground. He leaps backwards, cursing. He hand slides into his jacket, keeping his weapon concealed as he tilts the pistol in his shoulder holster back and up, finger on the trigger.

“What the fuck?!” “ 

State your name and your request.”

The voice comes from all directions, loud and clear. It’s Barbara.

Jason’s eyes narrow. “What is all this?”

“State your name and your request.”

“Kara, if you’re in there, tell your sister to let me in the goddamn door!”

The reply comes in a slow, droll voice, as if trying to relay information to someone who crushed Tranq on a daily basis. “State your name. And your request.”

Jason chewed on another retort before shouting into the intercom. “Jason from the Red Hoods. I’m here to get information about Nightwing … about Dick.”

The iron door slides back into the ground. The defense drone behind Jason folds up and rolls back under the stone wall.

Glowering, Jason enters.

* * *

Babs had never once considered what living on the Freescape entailed. Now, mere months after escaping into the company of people she’d once deemed threats, she’s slowly coming to embrace the changes that make her new life.

Living out in the desert is different from the Garden. The sun hangs angrily in a sky whose color, unlike the eternal, manufactured red of the Garden, changes. The weather is awful, and comforts that she so easily had available to her are scarce if non-existant.

But what she lacks in the familiarity of the Garden she makes up for in the family she has in Kara, and the purpose she serves to honor the fallen. Her father, the people she’d unknowingly hurt, the lives she worked to save. Kara had told her that’s what the Freescape did to a person. One day, the endless nothing granted you perspective, clarity, and she wants that purpose she sees in Kara as she walks around, head high. The genuine smile that lights up the world.

It should be better living without the eyes, living without watching, just living without…. But the Freescape is oppressive in it’s silence and emptiness. But she manages. For a few hours at least.

She’s come to know far more people in the time she’s been here, which seems odd when the population of the garage and this part of the blasted lands could fit on a block dormitory. Among the new faces are old ones. Like Mercy Graves, who uses the name Selina out here. It had been a shock to see her strutting through the bar clad in leather and a feline grin.

And there had been Dick Grayson. The Freescape changed him into something she barely recognizes. It wasn’t just the missing mask and the ink sprawling across his body. His edges were sharper, and his smile…. His smile is different, especially when directed at her. It lacks the restraint and the simmering impatience that underlined his every action back in the Garden. And she’d known it wasn’t just the Freescape that led to this transformation.

Now, in her private base, stands Dick’s partner. She almost laughs at that description. Dick had always hated partners, said they weren’t for him. There were always too many eyes on him, and he didn’t want another person watching him. He’d never appreciated someone knowing who he was and being able to reflect it back to his face. Too dangerous to rely on another person.

If Dick’s partner was coming to her for his location it’s because Dick has gone missing.

The leather in Jason’s coat creaks around his elbows as he folds strong arms across his chest.

“You got anything to tell me or not?” He grounds out. The tension that wound through his body has flipped to anger, and he’s not afraid to let it splash onto the floor.

“I only have so much intel about this one.”

“This one?” Jason repeats, flatly.

“Selina keeps things close. ‘For the mystery,’” Babs says, repeating Selina’s words for her own amusement.

“You mean she doesn’t trust anyone as far as she can throw them.” His glare is pointed. She could take offense, but that would probably take more time, which is another luxury out here. If Selina and Dick really are in trouble—

“Two weeks ago, Selina came to me with coordinates for a clearground site south, southwest of the Garden. Official Garden communications list the site as a possible location for expanded food production. It’s supposed to be a farm.”

Jason scoffs. “Official Garden lies.”

Babs stops her retort, because Jason isn’t wrong. The Gardens have lied to the people for a very long time. On the other hand, the Garden pursuing a means of sustainable land rehabilitation outside their controlled environment means there’s value in the stark earth surrounding them. There’s hope for growth, for the future. She’s not ashamed of defending that hope or the lives of the people struggling to make that future a reality.

Her energy, however, will be better served on the issue Jason brought to her than on hope.

“The coordinates checked out. The plans are from a silo. Silos are black sites for the Garden experimental projects,” Barbara explains further when Jason simply stares at her. “Those projects can range from weapons testing, security upgrades, medical safe-testing, and yes, farming techniques. A lot of these things are done away from the Garden to preserve the city’s safety.” The phrases fall from her mouth, rote repetition.

“Sure, Red. Do you know useful details? Is this Selina’s expedition or is she working for someone? Where did she get the intel from?”

Babs pushes a knuckle to her mouth stilling the urge to smile. Red is better as nicknames go, she supposes. Progress. Still, she’d prefer it if he’d just use her name.

“You could call me Babs.”

Jason’s grin is sharp as a knife. “Yeah, I could.”

Barbara bites back a retort. “The info-tags are for Edward Nygma, a reliable source in the Garden. More or less.” She tosses a cipt that contains the details.

“That’s all you got for me?”

“It’s more than you came here with, I’m sure,” Babs replies, voice droll. The look she receives is poisonous. She shouldn’t find it amusing, but circumstances be damned, she does. “I know that you’re concerned about Dick.”

The overall posture of Jason’s body changes at those words, and an angry sneer twists his lips.

“But you shouldn’t be. Dick is… or was the best enforcer in the Garden. He’s completed hundreds of solo operations and more with his squad. And he’s always come through.”

She meant the words as comfort, a voice of experience. She’d seen first hand the hundreds of ways Dick has lived to see another day, against the odds. But even in her haste to reassure him, Jason’s expression closes off and his eyes glitter angrily.

“He’s a Red Hood,” Jason says, lowly. “And we take care of our own.


End file.
